Advertising disclosure

This content is not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of the bank advertiser, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. This site may be compensated through the bank advertiser Affiliate Program.

How to Invest Money to Grow Your Wealth

One of the most popular financial goals people set is to achieve millionaire status. It’s a great goal, and something most people can achieve with enough discipline and time. We have written an entire series on reaching this goal, and this article covers the step of how to invest. By now, you are earning money, spending less than you earn, and saving the difference. But simply saving money will not make you a millionaire – you need to make your money work for you. That means you need to invest your money.

How to Start Investing

Start investing today!

The first, and most important step is to create a basic emergency fund before you start investing. Why? Because the last thing you want to do is to have to cash in your investments to pay for an unexpected expenses that may pop up. Even though your money won’t be earning much in interest, you will have those cash reserves available at a moments notice. Once you establish your emergency fund, you should begin investing. There are literally thousands of ways to invest, so this is meant to cover only basic investing principles.

Pay Yourself First

Add investing to your budget, make it automatic, and invest before you ever see the money. This way you don’t ever have to worry about “finding” the time and money to invest. Your system will already be in place and you won’t need to worry about it except when you need to rebalance your allocations once or twice a year, or if you decide to invest more money.

Make Your Investments Automatic

The same principle to automatic saving applies to automatic investing. Set it up so you don’t even think about it. That way, you know it gets done on time, every time. Many people choose to invest through payroll deductions in employer sponsored retirement plans such as a 401(k), the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), pension plans, and other defined benefits plans. You can also set up automatic deposits to invest in IRAs, mutual funds, single stocks, and many other investments. Automatic investing is a painless way to ensure you invest.

Wait, what about timing the market? I’ve read many arguments about timing the market, and for the average investor, it’s basically impossible to know how and when to invest to beat the market. The average investor (which most of us are) is better off using dollar cost averaging to buy stocks on a recurring schedule. When stocks are priced lower, you buy more shares. When stocks are priced higher, you buy fewer shares. The idea is that over time, your total number of stocks increases and you don’t have to worry about beating the market.

Invest in Tax Advantaged Retirement Funds

The most common retirement funds most people are aware of are IRAs and 401(k) plans. But there are many other tax advantaged retirement accounts such as the TSP, 403(b), 457, and defined benefit plans (such as a pension). There are also multiple variations of IRAs including Roth and Traditional IRAs, retirement plans for small businesses, and more. The good news is that you can have more than one retirement account.

These retirement plans have additional benefits over taxable investments – the investments can grow without taxes dragging down their value every year. For tax deferred plans such as a Traditional IRA or a 401(k), you invest money before taxes and pay taxes when you withdraw the money in retirement. Other tax advantaged accounts may be the opposite – you pay taxes now, only to enjoy tax free growth and withdrawals in retirement.

Find those accounts which you are eligible for, and take advantage of them – especially if you can receive an employer match on your contributions. Contact your HR department to open an employer sponsored plan like a 401k. If you want to open an IRA, then you can do that with a variety of brokerage firms and other investment houses and learn more about the IRA contribution limits you will have. Here is a resource for some of the best Roth IRA providers.

Don’t Withdraw Your Retirement Investments

The best thing you can do with the money in your retirement accounts is leave it in a retirement account. This means not cashing in a 401(k) when you change jobs, not taking loans from your 401(k), and not cashing in IRAs or other accounts before retirement age. The early withdrawal penalties for retirement accounts are steep – you are required to pay taxes on your withdrawals, in addition to an immediate 10% penalty. This doesn’t account for state taxes or penalties. Depending on which tax bracket you are in, the taxes and penalties could amount to almost half of your withdrawal.

You should also take care to account for all your retirement plans when you change companies. There are several options for your 401(k) when you change jobs and it pays to research which option is best for you. In most cases, people will be best off when they roll their old 401k into their new employer’s plan, or into a Rollover IRA.

Pay Attention to Asset Allocation and Diversification

Asset allocation is how you divide your money among your investments. There are many theories to the best asset allocation, but as everyone’s situation is different, there is no way to cover each asset allocation possibility in this article. Try to find a mix appropriate for your time horizon, risk tolerance, and your financial goals. The SEC has an asset allocation primer, or you can start by reading an investment book from your library. If in doubt, start with a life-cycle fund which uses professionally determined investment mixes that are tailored to different time horizons. These are a great place to start until you know more about your investment needs and risk tolerance.

Diversification is also important. If we were certain about a particular stock’s future performance, we could place all our money in it, wait until it rises to the right price, then cash it in and live like kings for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately we don’t know what will happen. That is why it’s best not to put all our eggs in one basket, especially with company stock.

A better solution is to diversify our holdings by purchasing investments in different asset classes and sectors – stocks, bonds, index funds, mutual funds, real estate, precious metals, large size funds, mid size funds, small size funds, growth funds, value funds, international funds, etc. It may seem daunting at first, and for many people it can be. Again, a good place to start is with a life-cycle fund which is automatically diversified for your time horizon. That doesn’t mean you have to leave it there, you can always learn more about other types of investments as you go. The key is to start investing as soon as you can.

Keep it Simple

You don’t need to worry about investing in individual stocks, options trading, foreign exchange, binary options trading, commodities, or other exotic investments. Most people are better ff just matching the stock market, investing as much as they can in tax advantaged funds, and letting the power of compound interest work in their favor. Over time, matching the market will usually be enough to grow your wealth. If you feel the need to have some more exotic or risky investments, then try to limit it to around 10% of your portfolio. That way you don’t run the risk of losing too much of your portfolio at any given time.

Start Investing ASAP and Don’t Stop

Compound interest is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. The longer you let your money grow, the greater the impact compound interest will have. This is illustrated nicely in The First Million Is The Hardest.

By looking at the chart on this site, you can see that by starting at age 25 and investing $15k per year at 10%, it will take 20 years to reach the $1 million mark. But by continually investing afterward, it only takes 6 more years to reach $2 million, 4 more years to reach $3 million, 3 more years to reach $4 million, 2 more years each to reach $5-7 million, and one more year to reach $8 million. Compound interest truly is amazing! But the key ingredient to compound interest is time.

How to Invest $100

One of the most common misconceptions about investing is you have to have thousands and thousands of dollars saved to start investing.

IT couldn’t be further from that truth.

You can start your investment portfolio with as little as $100 (in some cases, you can start with even less).

One way to invest that crisp $100 bill is to put it in peer-to-peer lending. There are several peer-to-peer sites you can join.

One of the best for getting started is Lending Club. With Lending Club, you can buy notes in a loan for as little as $25. With just a modest $100 investment, you could invest in four different loans.

Another way for you to invest your $100 is with a robo-advisor.

There are plenty of robo-advisors you can choose from, but for $100, your best bet could be Acorns.

The idea behind Acorns is simple. You download the app, sync it to your bank account, and then it will invest the spare change which is left over with your transactions. They put the change into a variety of different investment avenues, both foreign and domestic.

You can jump start your investing by adding more money to your Acorns investing, like that $100 you have sitting around.

How to Invest $1,000

Maybe you find yourself with a little extra cash at the end of the year, or you’re enjoying a nice Christmas bonus. Instead of blowing it on a new TV, why not invest it? Obviously, you can use all of the investment options listed above, but with $1,000 you have a few more choices for your investment portfolio.

One way you can make the most of your $1,000 is to put it in low-fee index funds.

There are plenty of brokerages that you can use to do this, but most professionals suggest going with Vanguard. You don’t have to be a finance wiz to create a balanced portfolio. Vanguard has low fees, and offers plenty of tools to help you make the best decision for your money.

If you’re too worried about making those decisions for yourself, you can still go with those robo-advisors like Betterment. You can help dictate how the money is invested based on your risk preferences.

How to Invest $10,000

If you’ve found yourself with several thousand dollars saved up, it’s time to put your money to work. Don’t let the money just sit there.

One great way to invest $10,000 is to put it in real estate.

Now, $10,000 won’t be enough to buy a rental property, but it can be a nice deposit in a real estate investment trust. REITs are similar to a mutual fund, except the money is put into real estate. You can buy share in a REIT just like you would with stocks.

One benefit of investing in a REIT versus traditional real estate is you don’t have to worry about any of the landlord duties.

Both of these are extremely low-risk investments and they are the easiest way to invest your money. If you want to get the highest interest rate for a savings account, you will need to choose an online savings account. They have much higher rates than a traditional bank.

8 Comments

Dividend Growth InvestorJuly 25, 2008

I like this part. Maybe because I focus so much on this step I am decades from becoming a millionaire for the first time 🙁
As my algebra teacher told me once ” I’m now working on my second million. I failed at making the first one, so I decided to start working on the second one “

Compounding interest is fascinating. But it also applies to stocks, not just for deposits. In fact, if you have picked some great dividend paying stocks that have increased their dividend payments over time you would have achieved double the compounding effect.
If you had invested money into a hypothetical Dow Jones 30 ETF on 12/31/1919 you’d have received $5.80 in dividends in 1920. The index closed on 12/31/1919 at 107.23 accordin to DJ –http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/index.cfm?event=indexHistory.
Fast forward 80 years and assuming that your ancestors and their heirs up untill you spent all the dividends every year. And your investment is worth a little over $11000, but brings in over $250/year.http://www.valueline.com/pdf/valueline_2006.pdf

I recently started My Stock Market Journey and I am learnng how important it is took include dividend paying stocks as they really hope to boost your earnings. And I honestly did not think of the compounding effect until I read this post.

It is my goal to have a good retirement asset so right now I worked very hard and smart. I have some money in the bank and real estate but I want to be rich very very rich because inflation is running after us year after year.

Ryan, nice post. I like the part about investing at regular increments and dollar cost-averaging. Burton Malkiel wrote a great book called The Elements of Investing that went into detail on this. He showed that despite the stock market going basically nowhere for the 2000-2009 decade, folks who faithfully invested on autopilot with set amounts of money at set intervals had higher returns.

Also, Robert Shiller points out that investor psychology can make us want to pull out at exactly the wrong time and sell at the bottom and buy at the top. So, automatic investing effectively prevents this.

Subscribe

Disclaimer: The content on this site is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not professional financial advice. References to third party products, rates, and offers may change without notice. Please visit the referenced site for current information. We may receive compensation through affiliate or advertising relationships from products mentioned on this site. However, we do not accept compensation for positive reviews; all reviews on this site represent the opinions of the author. Privacy Policy

Editorial Disclosure: This content is not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of the bank advertiser, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. This site may be compensated through the bank advertiser Affiliate Program.